


A Midwinter Night's Dreams

by Cloudiana



Series: Full Moon Fever [3]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Adora (She-Ra) Needs a Hug, Alternate Universe - Adora Remains with the Horde (She-Ra), Alternate Universe - Catra is She-Ra, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst and Feels, Catra Needs Therapy (She-Ra), Episode: s01e11 Promise, F/F, Horde Adora (She-Ra), Horde Adora Leaves the Horde, Hurt Adora (She-Ra), Magicatra AU, Werewolf Adora, Werewolf Fights, some blood but not too graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28225443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloudiana/pseuds/Cloudiana
Summary: “I’m just a dangerous, dumb, mutt after all, aren’t I?” Adora’s eyes narrow as a humorless chuckle escapes her lips. “No sense humoring the wolf when you don’t need a guard dog anymore, eh Catra?”--------------------------------------------------The night before a mission to infiltrate a Horde base in Plumeria, Catra dreams about the night in the Crystal Castle when the Beast of the Horde left her to die. And then, about the night when she didn’t.Meanwhile, a recent Horde deserter has her own struggles with getting shuteye.TLDR; Catra is She-Ra and Horde!Adora is a Werewolf.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra)
Series: Full Moon Fever [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2045827
Comments: 18
Kudos: 137





	A Midwinter Night's Dreams

| 

Catra had hope every time the dream started. That was the worst part.  
  
The sequence was always the same. She enters the Crystal Castle already transformed and yells at the stonewalling hologram like an overworked Force Captain dealing with a difficult paper-pusher. “Hippie Princess said She Ra could heal,” she said slowly, enunciating every syllable. “I figured I should learn how to do that before Sparkles or Arrows hurt themselves and need my help. So, _hologram_ \- **How. Do. I. Make. Sword. Magic?** ”  
  
“Query not recognized,” came the static reply. She hissed involuntarily in frustration, unaware of the Force Captain skulking behind the crystal pillars.  
  
“Now I know why the First Ones got wiped out!” She groaned. “They all died waiting for you recognize their queries!” She rubbed her claws against her temples and muttered, “They were even too pretentious to just say 'questions' like normal people”  
  
“No. The First Ones were destroyed by Mara and the Dianans when they were compromised. And by Cyra, and the Magicats, when they betrayed us.” The hologram shifts colors and becomes something more . . . human as they spoke - If only for an instant. Its voice became warmer, but it sent chills down the Magicat’s spine. She’d heard this voice before. “But you will be different. It is you destiny, Catra. But first you must let go.”  
  
Before she can ask how the stupid castle knew her name, Adora triggers the alarm.  
  
Then, the giant spiders find them.  
  
Then, they find the infinite darkness room.  
  
Then, the memories come. And the arguments follow.  
  
Every time, Catra thinks she could get through to Adora. Show her that she could come with her; that she could be safe and free at Brightmoon; that she *wanted* her.  
  
But the right words always stick in her throat. Adora’s attempts to coax her back to the Horde annoy her just as much. “It wasn’t so bad growing up in the Fright Zone, was it?” “See? We still make a good team.” “Everything can go back to the way it was before. I promise.”  
  
And when the last memory comes, when they wander into the Black Garnet Chamber, her rage boils over, and she screams those some fatal words again. “Don’t you get it? I don’t want to go back with you. I don’t need you to protect me anymore! And you couldn’t even protect me back when I did.”  
  
In reality, she walked away before Adora could respond. In the dreams, somehow, she can’t turn away. She can’t escape the hurt that appears in Adora’s eyes, and she can only watch helplessly as it curdles into something darker.  
  
Before long, Catra is dangling on the cliffside, cursing the First Ones for their lack of occupational safety standards and arachnid-based security systems. Adora appears over the edge with her sword. _This is it,_ she always thinks. _This time she’ll listen. This time I’ll say the right thing._  
  
Catra’s wrong, as usual.  
  
Adora glares at the Sword, turning it over in her hands. “I can’t believe I was so stupid,” she whispers, almost to herself.  
  
“Well,” Catra says before she can stop herself. “You never were the smartest. Now help me—“  
  
“I thought you were my friend.” She says it so bluntly. Even though she’s heard the dialogue in many, many nightmares by this point, Catra is still taken aback. She can only manage a confused noise in response.

_Tell her._  
  
“Shadow Weaver was right.” She growls. Even in the dream, knowing what was coming, Catra readies the wrong response. The princess was ready her mouth ready to say the she was plenty strong without Adora’s help. That she had worth. That she wasn’t failure. That she wasn’t a burden on everyone around her.  
  
But that’s not what Adora meant. A hologram of the Magicat, fully transformed, appears beside the Force Captain. “I don’t need you anymore!” it screams before freezing. At this point, after a year of these dreams, Catra couldn’t remember if it had really been there or not.   
  
Adora’s face remains stoic, like she was facing down a cadet instead of her best friend. “People don’t _want_ me, Catra.” She says, repeating the words Shadow Weaver had relentlessly drilled into her since the Horde took her in. “If they _need_ me - if they need the Beast, if they need the perfect Force Captain - then they _tolerate_ me, but they don’t want me. They don’t want _Adora_.” She slowly drew the sword across the emerald webbing Catra clung to.  
  
“I’m just a dangerous, dumb, mutt after all, aren’t I?” Her eyes narrow as a humorless chuckle escapes her lips. “No sense humoring the Wolf when you don’t need a guard dog anymore, eh Catra?”  
  
 _Tell her!_  
  
“Adora, I never thought of you that way.” Catra pleads, feeling her grip slowly slipping.  
  
“You didn’t need me anymore, so you left me.” Adora says, as robotically as the hologram from the entrance — more to herself than to the struggling princess below.  
  
“Adora, I—“  
  
“You didn’t need me!” She shouts. “So you left me! Because you were never my friend, Catra! You never lov— you just _used_ me! Like everyone else!”  
  
 _Tell her!_ The right words don’t come out. They never do. “Adora, please listen to me—“  
  
“No!” The wolf thunders. Tears gather at the edges of her eyes “Everyone thinks they can just lie to me. The Horde, the Rebellion, Shadow Weaver, you! You all think I’m just some dumb brute.” Her voice grows scratchy. “Well I’ll show you all how wrong you are. I’ll get justice for what the Rebellion did without you, without her, and without any _handler_ to hold me back.”  
  
 _TELL HER!_  
  
“For the hundredth time, Adora, the Rebellion didn’t attack your—“  
  
“I know what I saw!” Her yell echoes through the empty room. The tears are streaming down her face by this point.  
  
The crystal walls around her glitch. Suddenly, she is surrounded by a burning town square. Adora stands up slowly, turns away, and took in the scene. Catra couldn’t see much while dangling, but the simulation was thorough. The coppery stench of blood and smoke filled the room. Desperate screams mingled with gutteral, heartless howls.  
  
After what seemed like an eternity, Adora kneels over the cliff again - her eyes icy. A great grey, red-eyed werewolf appears behind her — Its muzzle damp and rusty. All the voices from before fall silent. The only one left is a lone child — whimpering. Catra recognizes the sound immediately — she’d heard it a long time ago in the Fright Zone, back before Adora got better at hiding her hurt. The grey werewolf smiles, displaying blood-smeared fangs. As it rises on its haunches and towers over Adora, the wolf it had created that night, Catra sees a corrupted version of the Brightmoon crest branded onto its chest.  
  
“I know what I saw.” She growls lowly. “Hordak is right. As long as you *princesses* are running Etheria, no one is safe. Someone has to be strong enough to bring order to this planet.” She leans in, bearing her fangs as she brings the sword closer to Catra’s trembling hand. “And it’s going to be me.”  
  
“To think, I’ve spent all this time trying to bring you back,” she says coldly as she cuts Catra’s lifeline. The Magicat falls several feet before she manages to snag her claws in a stray crack in the crystal. “When I should have been thankful to have one less liar around to manipulate me. To get in the way.”  
  
The rest of the simulation fades, and the wolf tosses the Sword into the void. As she gets up to leave, Catra screams one last time. “Adora! Please—help me!”  
  
The footsteps don’t stop. “I thought you didn’t need me anymore,” the taunting voice echoes through the void. “You’ll be fine, She-Ra. Cats always land on their feet. Wolves don’t have the same luxury.” Her cruel laughter slowly fades along with her footsteps.   
  
Then, Catra is alone. She does what the voice tells her to. She lets go. But instead of landing and meeting Light Hope, in the dream she just keeps falling and falling and falling and falling an—  


* * *

  
The pain from her foot striking the bed frame jolted her awake. Catra took a minute to realize where she was — a cool-colored tent near the Plumerian border. She stared at the crystals handing from the fabric ceiling, breathing in time with their pulsing light in a vain attempt to calm her racing pulse. With what the Rebellion had planned for tomorrow, she had to be well rested.  
  
After a few minutes of unsuccessful meditation, Catra buried her palms in her eyes sockets and groaned. She had thought the dreams would have stopped after Adora . . . Deserted? The wolf had left the Horde certainly, but she hadn’t joined the Rebellion. She still blamed them for what happened to her home, for her curse. If Catra hadn’t learned about the Cult of the Claw from Angella (who had been exceeding patient after the Rebellion’s newest member burst into the throne room spouting murder accusations) shortly after the incident, she would believe the Horde’s version of events too.  
  
The Cult had a weird connection with Brightmoon. Their leader apparently claimed to be the rightful ruler of kingdom by some nonsense blood-right claim that went back a thousand years. The Brightmoon Hunters were founded originally to protect the capital — and the Moonstone — from their raids. Over the last few decades, the Cult all but vanished, retiring to the Crimson Wastes for some unknown reason. So, the Hunters were very pleased when the Beast of the Horde made its debut six years ago and justified their existence.  
  
Why these lunatics would have attacked Adora’s town, a place hidden in the Whispering Woods so well Brightmoon was only vaguely aware of it, so obscure no one even knew its name, was anyone’s guess. All things considered, Catra assumed the Horde hired them, but why? What was so special about that place?  
  
Catra had tried to explain the next time they had a chance to really talk, not just shout over the battlefield. But Adora was too concerned with looking distractingly good in a dark crimson dress uniform (who knew the Horde even had those?) and kidnapping her friends to listen to her.  
  
 _Ugh._ Catra knew she was spiraling again. She tried to stead her breathing. Think about something relaxing. The sound of that waterfall that’s in my room for some reason. The smell of the pies that weird old lady makes. The feel of Adora’s hand on my back as she dipped me at Princes Prom in that dress uni— _No! Not helping._ That image would **not** get her heartrate down.  
  
Catra gave up and started unconsciously kneading the sheets. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t keep Adora off her mind.  
  
Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. Catra closed her eyes and tried to conjure the memory of their most recent encounter. Visualization, as Hippie Princess called it. Breathe in. Breathe out.  


* * *

  
The shadow beasts were gaining on them. The skiff wasn’t fast enough to outrun them, especially once Bow had to start dodging the tangled roots of the Whispering Woods. Catra knew from personal experience how easy it was to crash.  
  
Shadow Weaver sent them after her. They were chasing her. Her friends were going to die because of her. Unless she—  
  
“Get back to Brightmoon. Don’t stop! I’ll catch up!”  
  
“Catra,” Glimmer yelled. “What are you—“ Before she could finish, Catra left off the skiff. Landing gracefully on her feet, she rose to face the monsters Shadow Weaver sicced on her. She reached to her belt for the Swor—  
  
 _She left it on the skiff._  
  
 _Catra left the Sword on skiff. But she left it with Glimmer! Who could tele— who couldn’t teleport. Because of Shadow Weaver. Who was probably watching her and laughing very hard right now._  
  
“Fuuu—“ before Catra could finish cursing, the first beast broke through the tangle.  
  
Catra bolted through the trees, using her agility to dodge the monsters. All she could do was put as much distance between them and her friends as possible. She always suspected that Shadow Weaver would kill her, but not like this. Not after she escaped from under her thumb twice. Not after Adora—  
  
Suddenly, she hit a slippery patch of moss on a branch, slipped, and fell hard into a clearing on the forest floor. She felt a sharp pain in her ankle as she tried to get back up. She was stuck, lying on her stomach as the beasts made their way towards her.  
  
The eyes of the shadow beasts shone out of the darkness. Everywhere she looked, they were staring back at her. She was surrounded. A few of the larger beasts skulked toward her, haunches raised.  
  
This was it.  
  
Just as the lead beast was about to sink it’s teeth into her, a flash of blonde fur streaked through her vision, knocking the beast aside like it was nothing. Before she could form a thought more coherent than _“wut”_ Catra found herself looking up at the belly of the wolf as it . . . protected her?  
  
She could only watch as the wolf batted away beast after beast, each dissolving back into inky smoke under its claws. Having to keep Catra safe under her forced her to take hit after hit after hit. Catra winced in time with her protector at every wet tear and sickening bite. She heard the wolf’s breath get more and more ragged as the minutes dragged on.  
  
The last beast took advantage of the wolf’s clear exhaustion, managing to hook its jaws around the wolf’s throat. Its anguished cry stabbed Catra’s ears. Ignoring the burning pain in her back foot, Catra pounced, jabbing her claws right under the shadow beast’s jaw. She knocked it clean off the wolf and watched as it dissolved under her own claws.  
  
Catra didn’t know what she expected to see when she turned around to face her savior. The blonde, 10-foot werewolf - fur every shade of yellow - could barely keep itself up on all fours, even in its most powerful form on a full moon. With fresh blood covering most of its coat, and burn marks from stun prods scarring the rest of it, Catra could almost mistake this wolf as belonging to one of the many packs that roamed Etheria. But there was no mistaking those bright blue eyes. Catra would recognize those anywhere.  
  
“Adora?” She whispered. The wolf weakly tilted up its head and limped a few steps closer. Catra reached out a hand, and the wolf shied away, either scared or ashamed. “It’s ok, Adora. It’s me, Catra,” she said, repeating a mantra she had used on many full moons in the Horde. Adora slowly turned her head and nuzzled Catra's hand. “You saved me?” She said as she scratched the wolf's enormous ears. She spoke to herself really because she knew Adora couldn’t understand her like this. “Why?”  
  
As expected, Adora just whined in response. Her tail thumped a few times, causing her to grimace in pain.  
  
“Get away from her!” The shouts of her friends broke through the brush. Adora’s eyes widened with panic. Before Catra could say anything, Adora took off in a desperate sprint, ignoring her own wounds, and disappeared into the brush.  
  
Before Catra could finish processing her feelings from the memory, a wild howl broke her out of her reverie. And somehow, she understood just what it meant - it was like hearing a language for the first the time and understanding every word.

* * *

  
“Cats always land on their feet. Wolves don’t have the same luxury.”  
  
Her own cruel laughter rang in her ears as she punched the cave wall and jolted herself awake. “That’s not fair,” she muttered to herself as she turned over in her makeshift nest. Her brain shouldn’t be able to use _that_ memory when it decides to torture her with a nightmare. It was cheating. _Pick one terrible memory, you lazy pile of grey matter; don’t just go to the night when I relived them all and left her to die out of spite._ Even if at the time, deep down, Adora knew Catra would make it out alive, that memory still stung. Every time she had that dream, Adora hoped she could push past the hurt and do the right thing, and every time she just failed her again.  
  
The ex-Force Captain laid her head back into the old Horde uniform that served as a pillow and stared at the crystal ceiling of her den, waiting for her heartrate to slow down. The nest was mostly made from the softest mosses she could scavenge from the forest, but she felt better having old things like her jacket piled around. She tried to convince herself that it was all for practical reasons, but deep down there was no denying that it was “Wolf Stuff.” Though, Adora suspected that even wolves would find it weird that she kept the incriminating clothing because it smelled like . . . someone important to her.  
  
Finally, the wolf sighed, threw off her blanket, and met the cold air of the midwinter night. As much as she needed extra rest for what she had planned in Plumeria tomorrow, she knew she couldn’t force herself to get any extra hours of sleep after that, especially not when she was one night away from a full moon. She still had a few more hours before dawn, so she decided to make good use of them. With a casual growl, she stepped out of her den on all fours, half-shifted (as she called it) into her normal-sized, wild wolf form.  
  
The moonlight on the snow lit up the forest like midday. Adora felt its power course through her blood. She couldn’t see it, but her eyes glowed an otherworldly blue.  
  
She ran. She reveled in the crunch of the fresh snow under her paws. In the wind whipping through her fur. In the muffled heartbeats of prey hidden all around her. These were her woods. This was her home. And she was free.  
  
Adora could never really escape her own thoughts, but when she was a wolf, she could get damn close. It was even better when a true full moon was out, but that would have to wait until tomorrow. She was so caught up in her wild self, Adora howled from the heart from the first time — without a care for who would hear it.  
  
For one morning, catching breakfast and running wild, Adora — and all her regrets and mistakes faded away — replaced by the Lone Wolf of the Whispering Woods. Tomorrow, the legend of the Lone Wolf would grow even more. Maybe so much, the wolf hoped, that Adora would disappear all together.  
  
Adora would like that. Most people on Etheria would like to forget about her too.  
  
The only one who wouldn’t was lying awake in her tent, hoping to hear another howl like the last.  


|   
  
---|---|---  
  
**Author's Note:**

> Welcome back, readers! Now that the holidays are here, I finally have time to add more to this AU. Maybe someday I'll even tell you what happens in Plumeria . . . 
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed this installment. Please leave a kudos or comment if you did. Every one of them means a lot to me and inspires me to keep writing.
> 
> I played around with tenses a bit in this one, so if that felt wonky (or hopefully effective) let me know. If you have any questions about the worldbuilding, I'd love to answer those too. Mainly, I want to know if the emotions were effective, but overall (as always) was it fun to read? 
> 
> I will also happily take any requests for scenes, since I would love to know what you all want to read. 
> 
> It's been an awful year and sharing this crazy AU with people and seeing your comments and responses has been a delight. I hope this weird corner of the internet has brought you some joy too.
> 
> Stay safe, and Happy Holidays. 
> 
> AwwwooooooOOOOOOOoooooo!


End file.
